…Last month, administrators at Gibson Elementary in Fresno informed parents that students would be disciplined for using the word “gay” in a negative fashion. A fourth-grader at the school has already been suspended for saying “that’s gay” during a soccer game — a phrase school administrators claim constitutes “sexual harassment” — and another student was sent to the principal for a similar infraction.

Brad Dacus is president of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), which recently sent a letter to school officials, informing them of the constitutional issues at stake — and demanding they reverse the policy, or face the consequences…

“This amounts to not only a free-speech violation,” says Dacus, “but a clear breech of parental trust, in that it engages an open endorsement of homosexuality and suppression of students who think differently.”

…Dacus explains that the concern is valid; similar guidelines, he says, could soon be in place throughout the nation. “School districts often follow what California is doing,” he laments, “and the teachers union organization [National Education Association] is in many states across the country — and this is exactly the kind of thing that they inevitably support.”